


So Easy

by cyphernaut



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-22
Updated: 2014-06-22
Packaged: 2018-02-05 18:05:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1827361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyphernaut/pseuds/cyphernaut
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A response to a prompt that asks for John to Fall in love with Mycroft and have to choose between the brothers after Sherlock refuses to raise his child.  Full prompt in the notes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	So Easy

**Author's Note:**

> Response to the following prompt:
> 
> "John and Sherlock have a baby that Sherlock didn't want. Sherlock loves John more than anything but just can't handle sharing John with the baby and he isn't willing to try either. John is torn between Sherlock and his child and knows he's going to have to choose between them. John decides he needs time to figure out what he's going to choose. Mycroft offers John the option to stay at his house with him while John tries to come to terms with what he's going to do. Sherlock hates the idea of John going to live with Mycroft because he knows something John doesn't (that Mycroft is in love with him)but John decides to accept Mycroft's offer somewhat unwillingly While staying with Mycroft John see's how Mycroft looks after his baby and how he'll even get up in the night to give the baby it's feed to give John a rest. The domestic lifestyle they fall into after some work causes John and Mycroft to form a bond and soon John realises Mycroft's not only in love with him but also his baby. John falls for Mycroft as well but is also in love with Sherlock, Thus he has to decide between Sherlock and Mycroft.
> 
> Angst, Hurt and comfort all the way please with a bucket of fluff too if it's going!"
> 
> Written in half an hour. Un-betaed, and no chance for a totally happy ending.

Sherlock wouldn't look up from his experiment, but John wasn't fooled into thinking he was distracted. Sherlock had avoided looking him in the eyes since the accident, since John had rushed to take Esther from the social worker, had picked through Harry's flat seeking out anything that could make this experience less wrenching than it had to be.

“Our lifestyle isn't conducive to the raising of a child. Jean's sister has already offered to take her.”

“I'm her-” He broke off, unable to articulate the relationship he had with his niece by law and daughter by blood. She was only two weeks old, but she'd already kept Harry sober for over a year, somehow eliciting a love so strong that it had brought John's sister back when nothing else could have. It was a cruel twist of fate that she'd never remember the mother she'd saved.

“You're her uncle, and Katie is her aunt. Genetics aside, there's no reason to prefer you to her.”

“They specifically requested that we raise her.”

For the first time in three days, Sherlock looked straight at him. “No.”

* * *

Sherlock had taken Mycroft's offer as the betrayal that it most likely was. John didn't have a choice, though. He'd stopped taking work until he could get things sorted with Esther, and Sherlock had made it clear he wasn't willing to have a baby in the flat. Staying at Harry's had been a reasonable choice, until John had broken down in the doorway, too overwhelmed by grief to take a step further inside.

Mycroft's home was spartan, void of anything that could induce emotion, and John appreciated the reprieve. He'd thrown himself into parenthood, pushing everything else out of his mind as the baby's needs completely consumed him. He vaguely noticed that he hadn't needed to leave the house in weeks, with baby supplies appearing at the most opportune times, his clothes mysteriously laundered, and meals ready in the kitchen at the oddest of hours.

He slept lightly, keeping the same schedule as the baby, and when somehow her cries didn't wake him by two in the morning, he sat up with a start, imagining all the things he knew could go wrong for infants in the middle of the night.

As he entered the makeshift nursery, he he realized why he hadn't heard Esther's cries. Mycroft was singing softly, rocking her back and forth, an empty bottle on the table beside him. He looked up at John's appearance, vulnerable in a way that John had never seen him.

“You've been exhausted recently, and I was already awake dealing with a crisis in the Balkans. I hope I didn't over step my bounds.”

“No, it's fine.”

He relaxed slightly at John's approval, smiling back down at Esther and stroking a finger across her cheek. “What must it be like, to be completely oblivious to all the terrible things in this world?”

John had seen his own share of terrible things, and he could only hope to spare his daughter the horror. She'd lost her mothers, certainly, but John could ensure that she would always know that she was loved and taken care of.

“I imagine all she knows of the world now is that her needs will be met,” Mycroft said, echoing John's own unspoken dream for his child.

Mycroft's mobile buzzed, and his familiar mask slid back in place as John reached for his daughter.

“Ah, yes, duty,” he said, as he released the child to John's care and resumed his official persona. “I do apologise for disrupting your routine.”

John lay Esther back in her cot. “Really, Mycroft. It's fine.”

* * *

It hadn't taken much for their lives to intertwine. There was no negotiation of boundaries, just John's tacit acceptance of Mycroft's growing role in the care of his daughter, and somehow she seemed to become theirs. It was easier than living with Sherlock, no strange experiments in the oven, no rows over destruction of property, and if John occasionally missed the excitement and intensity of his relationship with Sherlock, he was beginning to enjoy the quiet way that his and Mycroft's lives somehow joined together seamlessly, no jagged edges to wear himself out on. In some ways, it was too easy, too perfect.

“I think I should start looking for a flat soon,” he said softly, careful not to wake Esther after her midnight feeding. Mycroft was sitting in the rocking chair, carefully folding a soiled flannel that would soon be in the wash. John leaned back against the dresser and ignored the tightness in his chest as he continued. “We've really imposed on you long enough.”

“It's not an imposition,” Mycroft said, and if there was a slight crack in his cool veneer, John could only imagine it was to cover the polite lie of the perfect host.

“You've been good to us, Mycroft, but I don't want to get too used to this. If we stay any longer, I'm not sure that I'll be able to leave.”

“You don't have to,” Mycroft told him, and it wasn't a lie. The same face from the first night was back, and John recognized it for what it was: fear of rejection from someone who never took that risk. John began to piece together the puzzle that was their relationship. Suddenly he wasn't sure what to do with his hands, and Mycroft was surely deducing facts about him that John himself didn't know.

“Sherlock's your brother,” he said, and Mycroft didn't scoff at him for stating the obvious. It was wonderful and frightening, and John was dizzy with the ease that he fell into it.

* * *

_Come back. – SH_

_There's a case. I need an assistant. – SH_

_Come back. - SH_

_John, I need you. - SH_

_John, come back. - SH_

_Please._

_Don't do this to me._

_Please, John._

John turned off his mobile.

* * *

“It's what you've always wanted, isn't it? To take everything from me.”

“Sherlock, please!” Mycroft's hiss was barely audible, certainly not in comparison to Sherlock's fulminations.

“You've never been content to let me have anything of my own. Where are you hiding him?”

“He's not hiding, and he doesn't belong to either one of us. If you could just-” Mycroft's reasonable objections were cut short as Sherlock burst into the nursery where John was dressing the baby.

“Come home, John.” Sherlock looked awful, eyes sunken in from lack of food and sleep, breath heavy as he clenched and unclenched his fists at his sides.

John finished snapping up the outfit and picked up his daughter, holding her carefully to him as if he could shield her from Sherlock's resentment. “You wanted me to choose between you and my child.”

“I wanted you to choose me.”

Esther wriggled in his grasp, and John looked into her face. It was a shame she'd not taken any of the features he shared with Harry. She had Jean's eyes and his nose and mouth, but he couldn't stop searching for a bit of his sister in her.

“You were right Sherlock. Our lifestyle wasn't conducive to the raising of a child. I can't risk her losing anyone else.”

Sherlock was lost. John saw it, saw him slipping away, grasping at anything that would pull his life back together again.

“You need the excitement. You'll never feel right without it. You need the cases, and the thrill.”

“Yeah, but she needs me more.”

“You still love me, John. I know you do.”

“Yeah, I do.” 

He loved her more, though. He didn't need to say it. Sherlock had already deduced it.

* * *

It was bad form, John knew, to cry over a break up with a former lover while lying in bed next to a current one. Mycroft, however, only put his arms around John with practised ease and comforted him with the same unerring compassion that he did their child. It had been so easy to fall in love with him, and in some ways, that had made it all the more difficult.


End file.
